The Holidays are OVER!  YOU MADE IT!
Wait, WHAT? Aren’t the holidays supposed to be magical? 
 Yes.  Yes, except when they are not.
Recently I read:
HAPPINESS = REALITY – EXPECTATIONS

What does that mean?   It means that EXPECTATIONS defeat happiness.
Expectations move us out of the present into the self defeating land of
Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve.   
A steady diet of Disney-esque fairy tales, romance novels, movies, white knights and sunsets has us believing that happy-endings are our due. 

Fairy tales, romantic novels, movies, gleaming armor and sunsets are not bad things.
Expectations, though, can be devastating.
Expectations rob from the present moment.
Expectations keep us from enjoying the here and now
when the here and now is all that we really have. 

As my Grammie Hannan used to say,
“The world doesn’t owe you a living.”
She also told me not stir poo with a stick.

This is not the blog that I expected to post on January 3rd, my 55th birthday.  That blog was light-hearted with clever reminders that holidays are hard for many (most) folks and offer a reminder to give yourself a pat on the back for making it to the other side of the holidays.   If I had posted that blog on January 2nd it would have been fine.  The next day it was not fine. 

Backstory:  All six children (including two spouses) were here for Christmas day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day.  The 2nd I was back to work writing the aforementioned brilliant blog and painting on a new painting.  The next day, my birthday, was a good day.  After supper I dusted off my internet connection and, while trying to remember my password, I allowed Facebook to distract me. 

A photograph in my feed took me back almost 40 years.

The photograph was of a high school classmate, Gloria, at a football game, but something was wrong with the uniform.  The headline didn’t make sense until I realized that it was not Gloria, but her daughter Sara Mutschlechner.  Sara, 20, a UNT (University of North Texas) student, had been shot in the head while driving friends home from a New Year’s Eve party.   Sara was dead.  The descriptions of Sara sounded like they were describing her mom.   The world shifted.   

Sara and her parents Gloria and Clay made it through Christmas, but now Sara, their only child, was dead.   I began weeping.  And not just for Gloria and Clay.  I wept for my sister, and my cousin.  For Pam, Jeff, Dianne, and Melodie.  I wept for the ones I love who have lost a child.

I was contemplating unspeakable loss.
Unimaginable loss that we all imagine.
A loss with no name.  An alienating loss.I claim that my paintings represent stories of hope.  I claim to make paintings reflecting nature and journey.   Paint laid down like seasons.  Past seasons shaping but not defining the present.  The present influencing but not determining the future.   Clear medium stretching the  space between applications of pigment marking the passage of time. 

Some layers are hidden during the process while others remain visible, even if only partially, through completion.   Each choice influences the next.  The impact of the unseen layers ripples through the painting. 

I work with the painting, I fight with the painting, until chaos is resolved and beauty revealed.

It is easy to say art is a metaphor for life.

It is easy to claim art has a power to affect lives. Do you know what is not easy?  Hope.  

 

Hoping that my claims are true.
Hoping that others can find their stories in my work.
Hoping that, finding themselves,
they will be imbued with hope for their journey and their beautiful end. 

Are my claims valid?
Can hope be represented with pigments on paper?
Is there anything more hopeless than losing a child?  

I watched Clay and Gloria share their hearts on the news, professing gratitude for the 20 years they had with Sara.  They are people of faith.  They are clinging to hope.  I am a person of faith.  I am clinging to hope.   As a community we are clinging to hope because expectations always let us down.  

Maybe the equation is not one of subtraction but of addition.

Maybe HAPPINESS = REALITY + HOPE.